Michael B. Emery & Irwin Richman

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$34.99

Heritage, or traditional, gardens and heirloom seeds are joined at the hip, but previous books have separated them. This is the first holistic look at several of the most vibrant trends in contemporary horticulture, both in vegetables and flowers. Lavishly illustrated, it is a how-to manual, a history, and a guide to gardens and historic landscapes. The basics of heritage garden design from California to the East Coast are here, with special attention to the Pennsylvania four-square garden. Plans and suggestions for your garden are included, and seed-saving techniques are clearly enumerated. A gallery of heirloom plants and lists of suppliers are featured. There are travel suggestions for visiting gardens ranging from Bethabara Park in North Carolina, to The Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum in Pennsylvania, to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. This book is sure to delight historians, traditionalists, green thumbs, and horticulturists alike.

Michael B. Emery is a native Pennsylvanian whose ancestors include both Quaker and Amish farmers. A graduate of The Pennsylvania State University, he is the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum’s Educator and Volunteer Coordinator. A font of knowledge about the Pennsylvania Germans, he is an avid collector of books, paper, and photographic memorabilia. Emery was born into a family with deep agricultural roots. Logan Emery Sr., Lewis (Mike) Emery, and Hazel (Emery) Alexander regaled Mike with their stories of growing up on the large family farm of C. Ralph and Rachel (Umble) Emery in northeastern Chester County. Mike remembers many family gardens and his great grandmother, Elizabeth Hoopes, had a raised circular flower bed on her front lawn. He is an active preserver of his family’s garden heritage and has saved many heirloom plants—which he shares with friends. Especially popular is Grandma Emery’s “outhouse rose.” When this fragrant, but thorny, climbing double pink rose is in bloom, the scent is overwhelming. At those times her “facility” was, no doubt, the envy of Chester County. Irwin Richman, Professor Emeritus, The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, works with the Landis Valley Associates, a private group dedicated to forwarding the aims of the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum. He is a widely known lecturer and the author and co-author of many books, including ten for Schiffer Publishing. Richman was born in New York City and summered in New York’s Catskill Mountains. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he tinkered in the brick-pathed garden behind his long-widowed Grandma Schwebel’s Italianate house. In the country there was Grandma and Grandpa Richman’s folky garden. Grandpa whitewashed tree trunks and the stones bordering the flower beds and the driveway. Grandma loved dahlias, “daillies,” and was adept at growing plants from ‘starts’ her friends and neighbors always shared.